The car rental woman at the airport had been helpful in getting me to the general location, north of I-30 and east of the North Tollway, over in the vicinity of Southern Methodist, but once I was in the area I had to ask three times before I finally found it near a giant shopping mall, a long low building with lots of windows, faced with pale stone and redwood, with a big carved golden eagle over the double doors in front. Something had been there first and had been torn down. Heaps of rubble were shoved to the back of the raw lot, waiting to be trucked off. They were starling to pave the parking lot. Some very small trees had been put into the planters, and a man was watering them.
I pushed my way into the air-conditioned reception area, where a man in khakis was slowly stripping transparent plastic from the reception-area chairs and couches.
A big nervous young woman came trotting back to the reception desk, stared at me, and said, “Thank God! At last!”
“At last what?”
“You’re from the electric, aren’t you? My God, you’ve got to be from the electric!”
“I’m from Florida.”
“If you’re here trying to sell something, I can tell you that you are going right back out that door so fast-”
“I’m not selling anything, buying anything, or fixing anything.”
She finally smiled. “Then you’re not going to be much good to us, are you? Honest to God, I’ll quit before I get involved in moving the office again.”
“I’m trying to find out a couple of things about a man who used to work for Eagle. His name is Evan Lawrence.”
“Doesn’t mean a thing to me. Not a thing. How long ago?”
“I’m not too definite about the date.”
“We get a big turnover on salesmen, especially the last few years. You know how it is. The old personnel records are on floppy disks, and unless somebody comes from the electric and gets that back office juiced up, nobody is ever going to read them. We’ve got four tabletop IBMs back there, with data-processing programs and printers, and our information about current sales and rentals is all on the disks, and we can’t run anything because the current keeps cutting out.”
“Who’s around who’s been here the longest?”
“Well, I guess that would be Martin Eagle.” She reached toward the phone. “Who will I say?”
“McGee. Travis McGee from Fort Lauderdale.”
She picked up the phone and said a very ugly word. Her face turned red. “Now the effing phone is effing well dead too. You wait here.”
She trotted off. The man uncovering the furniture was chuckling and shaking his head. She came back and beckoned to me, and I followed her to Martin Eagle’s big corner office with a view of the rubble piles and a corner of the mall and ten thousand automobiles winking in the heat waves. She waved me in and closed the door.
Martin Eagle looked over his shoulder at me and smiled and nodded and turned back toward the perforated section of white wall where he was hanging trophies and credentials on little hooks that fitted into the perforations.
He hung a framed scroll which said in Olde English that Martin Eagle was Junior Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year. It was dated three years ago.
“You think it’s maybe too close to the award from the city? What do you think?”
“I guess it would depend on how much you are going to hang there.”
“Good thinking. McGee, is it? Call me Marty. I don’t know if I should hang all this shit or not. Look, I got the top of the desk covered. Maybe I shouldn’t even hang that JC scroll. They gave it to five of us that year. I was the third runner-up. All this stuff could be, you know, ostentatious. But you take doctors. They hang stuff all over. Gives the patients confidence, I guess. I’m doing the same thing. Eagle Realty gives you a fair deal, buying or selling. That’s the only thing I’ve ever learned about this business. You screw somebody, it comes back to haunt you. Even when you don’t screw somebody, it comes back to haunt you. People don’t listen and people lie. What am I doing in a new building anyway? In these times. You want to know why? We got too big for the old place and we were going to stay right there, all packed in, no matter what, and they decided to tear down the whole block and put up another gigantic building. So here I am. Wait a second. I want to put up this little shelf thing and put some eagles on it. I’ve got a big collection of eagles. Pottery, silver, stone, wood. You wouldn’t believe how many I’ve got at home. Everybody knows I collect eagles, and there you are.”
He put four eagles on the little shelf and stepped back and made a little sound of satisfaction and went around his desk and sat down and gestured toward a nearby chair.
“It’s going to look okay in here when we get organized,” he said. “Nice building, don’t you think?”
“Very nice, Marty. My name is Travis McGee.”
“Trav, my friend, you have given me invaluable advice about my wall over there. I am in your debt. What can I do for you? Like a good price on a nice little house? Why live in Florida when you can live in Texas like a human being? Bring the wife around. In a week we’ll have our new slide show deal going and it will be computerized. The way it works, a man says he can spend from eighty-five to a hundred and five thousand. He wants at least a half acre of land. He’s got to have two bedrooms. Okay, we save a lot of time by showing the slides before we go out driving around in traffic. What can I do for you?”
He was a jolly man with a happy face. Dark hair combed all the way forward and then curved off to one side and sprayed into place. He was carrying a little too much weight, but he looked comfortable with it. Fawn-colored slacks, white shoes, yellow sports shirt with a little eagle embroidered over the left pocket. Gold chain around the neck and the right wrist. Gold watch on the left wrist. Gold ring on the right-hand pinky, with an eagle on it.
“I wanted to ask a couple of questions about a man who used to work here.”
“I’m telling you, Trav, we try to screen them all as well as we can, but these days it’s a real burden. A man fills out an application, and it costs you real money to check out all the references he gives you. What I do, and sometimes I’m sorry, I size them up myself. We have a little chat. Take for example yourself. If you wanted to work here, I’d say okay. I’d teach you the ropes, help you get the licenses. But I wouldn’t let you handle any cash money until I was damn well sure you were okay. I’m telling you that over the years we’ve had some bad apples. They float around like used car salesmen. But we’ve had some real good ones too. Who are you looking for?”
“Evan Lawrence.”
“Evan? Evan Lawrence?” He shook his head slowly. “No, that doesn’t ring any kind of a bell at all.”
“He said he worked here for at least a year, and he made quite a lot of money selling tract houses and lots for you.”
“Listen, anybody who makes money for me, I remember. Because when they make money. I make money. A year, you say? Trav, my friend, somebody is kidding you, or you are kidding me. What did this fellow look like anyway?”
I took the portrait folder out of the small leather portfolio, stood up, and leaned over and handed it to Marty Eagle across his big new desk.
Still smiling, he flipped it open.
All expression ceased. The blood drained from his face, leaving a yellowish cast to his tan. He seemed to stop breathing. Suddenly he looked alarmed, heaved himself up, and trotted to his personal executive washroom and slammed the door. I heard him in there retching, heard the water running, the toilet flushing. When at last he came out there was a gray tired look about him. There was a water stain where he had dabbed at his yellow shirt. He brought a faint sharp aroma of vomit, quickly dispelled by the air conditioning.